Thursday, August 13, 2009

Azarmehr writes today about a piece by Darius Guppy in The Independent a few days ago. I'd missed it.

Guppy's theme is that Iranians look with horror at the decadent place the UK has become, with drunken chavs falling over each other and vomiting in the street. By contrast, Iranian culture is sophisticated, ancient and noble. The latter is true enough, if you take a selective view of it. Of course you could take an equally selective view of Western culture and talk about Chaucer and Auden. Guppy doesn't focus on the nobility of raping girls before their judicial murder, but shows no signs of being discomfited by it. Guppy also says the election results were fair.

But it would be a mistake to get too drawn into his argument. Guppy's theme is not, in fact, Iran. It's Darius Guppy. Ever since being released from jail, he has been convinced that Britain's failure to hail him as a warrior prince is a sign of its decadence. This was in him before, in the form of a fascination with strong-man leaders of the past, like Napoleon and Hitler, but has become more entrenched since.

Earlier this year he wrote a letter to the Telegraph about his plot to have a journalist beaten up, in which he suggested that in the Britain of the past he would have been hailed as a man of honour for doing this. Of course, almost no society ever has considered the cowardly hiring of thugs to settle scores to be honourable, especially not that of Britain 150 years ago. Waiting on the steps of a man's club, armed with a horsewhip, perhaps. Challenging them to a duel, perhaps. But the anonymous hiring of thugs, no, not ever.

So he is a deluded man, sitting in exile, hating the society that failed to see and admire his nobility. This is why he thinks Britain is decadent, and it has nothing to do the contrast with Iran, that's just a convenient hook for his already-held view.

In his piece, Guppy refers to a phrase he apparently thinks deserves to enter the modern lexicon: "McDonald's-munching slaves" - that's the British, if you hadn't guessed. I have some slight sympathy, I don't like McDonald's burgers myself. I've only eaten them three times in the last twenty years, that I can remember. On two of these occasions, I was in the company of... Darius Guppy, who insisted on it. He liked McDonald's, and explained to me, with the frisson a coprophiliac might feel as he smeared excrement over his face, that he knew it was plebeian, but he just was drawn to the underbelly occasionally.

So why did The Independent print this piece by the McDonald's-munching Guppy? There is a strange connection between the two. Twenty years ago, Kim Sengupta was a very dapper young crime correspondent working for Express Newspapers, one with what I can only describe as excellent contacts within the police force. I met him at that time, still have his business card. He wrote a lot about Guppy, occasionally with surprising levels of insight into events behind the scenes.

Today, Sengupta writes for The Independent and specialises in Islamic countries and the War Against Terror, or whatever you want to call it. He is not a Neo-Conservative. I have no idea whether this had anything to do with the commissioning of Guppy's piece, but if the two did have any contact, they must have had a lot to talk about.

In passing, I notice that Guppy has been furnished with a supplementary nether orifice in the following posts, and commend the authors for their perspicacity:

And Lucy Lips at Harry's Place put things succinctly: "Fuck you Guppy, you sleazy little crook." - also pointing out that it has been reported that Guppy is a closet anti-Semite, which might have some bearing on his views if true. In fairness, I have to say I never heard him say anything to suggest this.